• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, April 27, 2012

The mobile video ad market will surpass the online video ad market later this year.

That’s a bold prediction, but it’s one Tod Sacerdoti, CEO of ad network BrightRoll is making based on ad requests he’s seen. “It’s happening fast and people are not quite comprehending the speed. By the end of this year we are pretty confident that more than half of all digital video ads will be mobile,” he said.

In March alone, more than 40% of the global video exchange requests at BrightRoll were for mobile. A year ago that figure was less than 5%, underscoring the rapid trajectory for mobile video, especially in the last few months. Sacerdoti said the number of global mobile ad requests BrightRoll handles has grown 4000% in the last year. Web requests are still rising too, at about 645% year over year.

One of the benefits of mobile video ads is they are often brand safe from the get-go, and are served to us in popular apps like Angry Birds, Draw Something, and Pandora, Sacerdoti said.

As such, he expects the growth in mobile video advertising will spread well beyond the premium big name publishers. “You have an enormous influx of supply and this is almost universally good for marketers. For publishers this may be a different group though, and publishers who have a strong business online might not be as meaningful on mobile.”